can't get started
by isawet
Summary: Eliot and Parker bond, in their own way.


Parker likes to sit against Eliot, her elbow knocking into the muscle of his arm, in the soft strips between his ribs.

"Get off," he grumbles, and she smiles with her mouth full, sugary cereal between her teeth. Her breath smells like Nate's expensive coffee, filched every morning no matter where he hides it, and when she sticks her tongue out one of those shriveled pastel marshmallows rolls on it. Eliot glares a little harder and shoves her in the shoulder, then curses when she spits the marshmallow at him. "You're disgusting," he says, and she shrugs at him, turning her attention elsewhere.

("Why is there soggy cereal on the couch?" Harrison half-shrieks, and Eliot has to work not to smirk at the sugar smear on the back of his pants.)

/

Sometimes Parker breaks into Eliot's house and rearranges the knives he keeps taped under the dining table, in the door of the icebox, behind the bookshelves and on the sides of his bedframe.

"They're for protection," he grits out, "and it won't do me any good if I reach out for one and _it's not there_."

Parker lowers herself to watch the coffee drip from the filter into the pot, "plop," she says dreamily, "plop."

Eliot tries to count to ten in his head, gets impatient at three, and smacks his palm against the counter at four to get her to turn around. "Do not. Touch. My things."

"Okay," Parker says agreeably, and Eliot narrows his eyes.

"Really? Just like that?"

"Sophie says I need to respect boundaries of people I respect," Parker says, pulling the cereal down and pouring it into her coffee. "Circle of respect."

"Right," Eliot says, sighing, "whatever."

/

"Hardison wants to have sex with me," Parker announces, and Eliot almost minces his thumb.

"Jesus Christ, you crazy bitch," he swears, pulling his hand up from the cutting board, his knife hand switching to a point down fighting grip on instinct. "How do you do that?"

"Don't call names," Parker says in a dead imitation of Sophie's accent, and steals a chunk of onion off the wooden board.

"That ain't cooked," Eliot says, and Parker smiles suddenly, the lightest curl of the corners of her mouth, her eyes gone half lidded.

"It's better raw," she says throatily, and snaps her jaws together in an audible crunch of teeth through fiber. "Ha."

"Don't you have Sophie to talk about these things? Or all the things?" As soon as he says it he clenches his jaw, a slip of the tongue and the mind, forgetting Sophie's not around like she used to be.

"I can't decide if I want to have sex with Hardison," Parker says, and tries to sneak another slice of onion. Eliot slaps her knuckles with the flat of the knife blade, lightning fast, and she curls her upper lip at him.

"Figure it out somewhere else," he says waspishly, "I'm busy."

"What are you making?" Parker asks, and inhales. "It smells like taxi."

"That's racist," Eliot tells her, "and it's a Bengali curry."

"Do you think it would improve team morale if I had sex with Hardison?" Eliot opens his mouth to answer and makes himself pause. "Sophie used to say to make a pro and con list to help make difficult decisions."

Eliot goes back to dicing the onion into tiny cubes, times the clopclop thunk of the blade on wood to match the easy beat of the song that's been stuck in his head for the past two hours. "The only reason you should have sex is if you want to have sex."

Parker frowns, like that's not the right answer. "That's the only pro-con I could think of. Team unity."

Eliot sighs heavily and wishes for a drink. "You like Hardison? You're attracted to him?"

"Yes," Parker says decisively, "when I first joined the team I picked him out as the one I would kiss for cons, and Sophie says that means I'm attracted to him."

"Hey," Eliot says, indignant. "What about me?" he coughs. "Or Nate?"

"Nate is different," Parker says, and snatches a bite of red pepper out of a small metal bowl before Eliot can land another hit on her hand. "Archie-different different. And I picked Hardison over you because I could stop Hardison if I wanted." She smiles at him, girlish, "I can totally take Hardison."

"But not me," Eliot says slowly. Considers the ramifications of that.

"Yes," Parker says, and steals three bites of vegetable because Eliot is suddenly utterly still, his fingers white around the knife. He takes a deep breath and releases it.

"You still think that way?"

"No," Parker says, and leans forward to roll her forehead against his back, a quick easy movement. "I know you'd help me stop him, now. Just not then."

Eliot turns to take a wooden spoon from where it's dangling on its hook, dips it lightly into the saucepan simmering gently on the stovetop. "Taste this," he says, and she dips the tip of her tongue into the spoon like a cat.

"Taxi," she says, and he swats at her with his free hand.

"But you still don't think about me that way," he says, and she slurps the rest of the sauce down, smacking her lips obnoxiously.

"No," she says, "I still pick Harrison."

"There's an answer for you," Eliot says, going back to the knife. "of sorts."

"Yes," Parker says absently, and then smiles, brilliant like the sun. "thanks."

Eliot feels the prickle of moral obligation at the back of his neck, something that never used to happen before he took up with Nate. "Hardison would stop if you asked," he says, "you wouldn't have to... take him." He twists his face up at the double entendre Parker won't understand anyway. He coughs. "And you should feel free to...ask."

"You're weird," Parker says cheerfully, and spins on her stool. Eliot feels things snap back, away from the strange sort of intimacy they had a few moments ago. She starts to hum the song that he's had stuck in his head, and he can't help that shiver that goes through him when Parker is almost supernaturally off in the way that she is. He shakes himself.

"Food's up in twenty," he says, and holds out a demanding hand for the paring knife she'd slipped out of the block and up her sleeve.

/

Eliot almost likes it when the plan goes to shit, mostly because the plan always goes to shit and it gets annoying teetering on the knife's edge of action, waiting for the moment when they find the twist in the plot. On the other hand, sometimes it royally goes to shit and Eliot finds himself cursing a streak that would give his mama a stroke from the heat of her rage.

This is one of those times, one of those plans that goes to crap so fast Hardison is shrieking in geek and Nate is shouting instructions, overlapping noise in his ear that interrupts the cool clean precision of his plan of action, the straight line from where he is and where he needs to be, through any and all obstacles in his way.

"Get Parker," Nate orders, and Harrison tells him where she is. Eliot traces the route in his mind and smiles.

"Come get me," Parker says plainly, the phrase she uses when she's stuck somewhere without an escape route, and he grunts to let her know he's coming.

He's just down a hallways and around the corner from where she is when she grunts in a high pitched gasping sort of way that he absolutely recognizes. He increases his speed, hurtling around and bracing his hands on the doorframe to get himself through even more quickly.

He hits the man in the cheap guard uniform like a sledgehammer, a clothesline to the face, and feels the man's nose break against the inside of his elbow. He follows it up with a punch to the temple and drops the guard against the scuffed tile floor. "Parker," he says, "you alright?"

"Is this what it feels like to be shot?" she asks, her voice thin, and his head snaps around in time with the echoed _what?_s in his ear. She's leaned against a bank of computers, her hand pressed just below her breastbone, and there's a streak of blood across her cheek like a tearstain. He catches her around the waist and knocks her hand out of the way.

"Dammit Parker," he says in a whoosh of relief, "you're not shot, don't say shit like that."

"I know I'm not shot," she says, "I asked if this is what it feels like."

"No," he says, "you've been stabbed. Being shot hurts more."

"A lot more?" She sounds young, suddenly, her hair a tangled golden halo around her face.

Eliot keeps an arm around her and starts steering them towards the door, cupping a palm around the hilt of the knife, still sticking awkwardly out of her. "Yeah darlin', a lot more. Don't pull that out, the bleeding will be worse."

"Okay," she says, and suddenly she's got her feet under her and they're moving quick down the escape route. Good girl, he thinks, but stops her at the last turn.

"Wait," he says, "let me clear the hallway." He pushes her against the wall and puts his finger in her face. "Stay."

There's only four of them, and they haven't got guns, but he's on the lookout for the roughed gripped knives like the one sticking out of Parker's torso. He supposes that was an extra though, because the only thing they're brandishing are poor skill and thin black batons. He takes one from the first guard and uses it to beat the next two into the floor, and then the last scores a lucky hit across his ribs, spinning him sideways. He straightens up to finish the fight and finds a slender frame in his way.

"Bad dog," Parker says, and a red smeared hand flashes, the last guard falling backwards making weak gurgling noises, clutching at his side. Eliot steps up and kicks him hard enough in the face that he's probably fractured it. Parker leans close to watch him slide down the wall, her head tilted sideways like a bird, and when Eliot pulls her up and back on course, he thinks he saw a smile playing about her mouth, curious and pleased all at once.

Sophie is in a car outside, the engine running, and she pulls away smoothly before Eliot has the backdoor closed behind them.

"Is she okay?" Sophie asked. "Nate's called the doctor to meet us back, will she make it?"

"Yes," Eliot says, and pulls her shirt up to take a better look.

"I lost my earbug," Parker says, and Eliot ignores her.

"Here," Sophie says, and passes back her scarf. Eliot rolls it around his hand and presses it to the wound.

"I told you not to take the knife out," he curses at her, "I had that covered, what'd you do that for?"

"Sophie says you have to make gestures for people so they know you care," Parker says, and her voice is steady, but Eliot can feel the muscles in her belly tremble under his hand as he presses down. She's firmer, stronger than he figured she would be until he thinks about it, how strong she'd have to be to do the things she does.

"Oh Parker," Sophie sighs from the front.

"There's something wrong with you," Eliot grumbles and Parker smiles, a little glassy around the eyes.

"I know," she says, and Eliot pauses at the way she says it, frowns. "Archie," she mumbles, and Eliot slaps her cheek, hard enough that a red welt starts to form. She frowns at him, but her gaze is clear again.

"It was nice," Eliot says, catching her eyes. "I appreciate it."

"Really?" she asks, hopeful, and Sophie rolls her eyes.

"Don't encourage her, Eliot."

"Really," Eliot says, grinning at her, "feel free to do it anytime." He slips the earbug out his own ear and into Parker's. "Harrison will talk to you now."

"Hi," Parker says, shyly, and whatever Hardison says makes her laugh, open and free and happy. Eliot keeps his hands pressed to her chest until the car rumbles off, straining to hear the rumble of Hardison's voice.

(Eliot comes home and all his knives are in the right places, but there's a fork resting on his pillow like it's crushed purple velvet instead of rough cotton, polished to a high shine. He picks it up and tests the weight, the feel. Real silver, he thinks, and smiles.)

/


End file.
